


carrion flowers

by salvage



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Season 2 Episode 3, whatever the opposite of animal death is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 00:13:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17069855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: You got used to the smell. It wasn’t the smell of rot, not after they came back, though for the first week or so that thick sick scent of decay lingered where their fur parted to reveal the soft viscera of their bodies. It was the smell of magic, the scorched scent of lightning in the heavy late-summer air, the bright metallic tang of blood at the back of your throat. So his home smelled of metal, usually; decay, sometimes; and, when the wind blew just right, the salt sharpness of the sea, the fragrance of the cypress and pine trees that flourished on the island, the sweet ripe citrus fruits that grew in a small grove near his house.





	carrion flowers

You got used to the smell. It wasn’t the smell of rot, not after they came back, though for the first week or so that thick sick scent of decay lingered where their fur parted to reveal the soft viscera of their bodies. It was the smell of magic, the scorched scent of lightning in the heavy late-summer air, the bright metallic tang of blood at the back of your throat. So his home smelled of metal, usually; decay, sometimes; and, when the wind blew just right, the salt sharpness of the sea, the fragrance of the cypress and pine trees that flourished on the island, the sweet ripe citrus fruits that grew in a small grove near his house. 

The house was never quiet and he was never alone, for although his self-imposed exile from humanity was complete, he was surrounded by the animals he had revived: Athena the owl, Pliny the cat, and Robert and Chester, both martens. Alexandria, a large wolfdog with a glossy gray coat, came and went as she pleased. (She was less social with the other animals than they were with one another, but she tended to orbit around Hector more than they did. He often found Robert and Chester asleep together, paws intertwined, breathing softly into one another’s fur, and on very cold evenings he sometimes found Pliny beside them.) And a new friend would soon join them. 

He found her by following the huge circling forms of griffon vultures, carrion birds whose tawny golden-brown bodies looked black silhouetted against the cloud-gray sky. As he left his house, the trees rustled and shuddered in the wind, showing the pale undersides of their leaves. He could smell the coming storm in the air. She wasn’t far from his home but it had already begun to rain when he found her, fat intermittent drops that spattered insistently on his head and bared forearms, soaking his sleeves and the shoulders of his vest. 

She had been taken down by an arrow, of which the head and part of the shaft were still embedded in her shoulder, just at the place where her fur gave way to raw, exposed muscle. With gentle hands he tugged the arrowhead out of her. It had likely been several days since she had been shot, as the skin around the wound was torn and jagged. She had walked with the arrowhead in her, likely ran, evading capture, but eventually she stumbled. She fell. Hector felt the bright ember of hatred within him burst into flames, the heat of it licking over his rain-cooled skin. Someone—some human—had done this to this beautiful creature.

He gathered her limp body tenderly in his arms. She was surprisingly heavy for having such a sleek form. It made him smile. She had been a good hunter. A survivor. And he would allow that to flourish once again. 

It was raining in earnest by the time he reached the shelter of his house and he was utterly soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks, shirt sticking uncomfortably to the small of his back. His feet squelched in his boots. Yet the fox’s thick soft fur had repelled the rain and the place where he clutched her against his chest was mostly dry except for where a little of her fluids had leaked onto his shirt. It was all right. He had other shirts. 

Alexandria greeted him at the entrance, snuffling with her glossy black nose against the wet fabric at his knees. 

“Hello, lovely,” he said to her. “Glad to see you’ve returned.” 

Alexandria whined softly and her tongue, slightly desiccated but still colored a sweet pink, lolled out of her mouth. 

“Yes, I know you don’t like to get wet. Still, let me believe you’ve missed me.” 

The wolfdog dragged the side of her head, the good side with her single intact ear, against his thigh, and then leaned her shoulder against his leg affectionately. Her massive body exerted enough pressure that he would have toppled right over if he hadn’t expected this and braced himself with his other foot, leaning into her caress. 

Hector laughed. “I missed you too.” He went into the entryway, setting the fox gently on the long bench beside the door. He sat beside her and, grimacing, removed his soaked boots. Alexandria sniffed around them curiously. “Yes, I’ve walked many places,” he said to her. He made a mental note to move them up later so that he could dry them at the hearth, but for now the fox was his priority. He picked up her body, heavy with promise.

Alexandria followed on his heels as he went deeper into his house, leaving damp footprints on the wooden floor. It was dark inside, the ambient white-gray light of the cloudy late afternoon having abruptly given way to the pitch blackness of a summer thunderstorm. The rain beat heavily on the roof. 

Pliny was curled on a bolt of wool that Hector had been meaning to turn into another tunic for several months now. He awoke, raising his head, and sleepily blinked his remaining eye. The gashes over his missing eye twitched in sympathy. 

“I’ve got a new friend for you,” Hector told him. 

Pliny put his head back down. 

“Cats,” Hector said to Alexandria. 

Alexandria whuffed softly. 

Hector placed the fox so gently on his forging table. He pushed her to the middle of the transmutation sigil, arranging her body so that her paws were comfortably half-curled, her spine in a natural arch. He stroked his hand over the soft thick fur that covered her shoulders and the side of her neck. One of her ears was jagged, cut down the middle into two separate vertical tufts, and he rubbed his thumb over the split part of her ear affectionately. The exposed teeth in her partially decayed jaw looked sharp and white. Hector traced his fingertips over the smooth ridges of her teeth and the raw pink meat of her jaw beside it. The rain had rinsed away any gore that had remained on her and she looked pristine. Even the visible muscles of her left front leg were whole. The striated slabs of pink-red tissue locked together in their perfect mechanical pattern, adhering to the strong bone that underlaid them, connecting her little foot to her body, giving her the power to run and jump and pounce. He touched the rough pads of her foot, her slightly dulled claws. Certainly she was in better shape than Pliny, who was missing the skin of most of his back half and a good deal of the muscle, too. 

“Good girl,” Hector murmured. “I’ll make you better.” 

He would make her better. But first, he needed to put on some dry clothes. 

The adrenaline from running home with the beautiful fox in his arms had left his body by the time he reached the dark threshold to his bedroom and he was starting to shiver. The pale linen shirt he wore clung to his skin, leaving dampness on his bared stomach and back and chest, rucking up his hair, sticking to his arms as he peeled it off, inside out, and tossed it to the floor with a wet splat. He ran a hand through his hair; wet, its gentle waves tended toward all-out curls, and his fingers snagged in its tangles. The dry fabric of the new shirt he pulled on felt wonderfully warm against his skin, though the damp ends of his hair immediately began soaking its collar. He put on a vest, too, for warmth against the chill. His pants were next and, warm and dry once again, he gathered his wet clothes and started out of his room to set them by the hearth. 

Out of the darkness Alexandria’s eyes glowed with the familiar blue of Hector’s magic, round and unblinking and the only thing keeping him from immediately tripping over her large form as he exited his room to the dark hallway. She pressed against his legs as he passed her, breathing her loud affectionate whuffs at him as she followed him into the forging room. 

“One of these days you’ll have your eyes closed and I’ll step on you,” Hector reprimanded her without heat. She panted at him. 

Alexandria seated herself beside Hector as he knelt before the hearth, prodding at its dormant embers with an iron poker until they flared into a bright flame, crackling to life around the peeling, unburned wood of the log that had been slowly smoldering on a pile of charcoal and ash. It was the inverse of the arcane blue flames of his alchemy, the warm orange-yellow glow of the fire, and he felt another thrill of excitement about the imminent revival of the fox. 

Characteristically, Alexandria followed him around the house as he lit the candles that were clustered on strategically placed barrels. The stub of a candle he shielded with a half-cupped right hand spilled its warm golden light over the callused skin of his palm, worn rough by the use of his heavy forging hammer. Slowly, the house flickered to life around him, warm and familiar, seeming to lessen the rage of the storm that now howled outside. 

“I got you just in time, didn’t I,” Hector murmured to the fox as he went to the forging table once again. With a dozen lit candles surrounding the table and on the edges of the forging room, the fox’s lush pelt seemed almost mobile, highlights and shadows moving across it as though she were alive. She was still, though not for long. 

He took his hammer in his hand, feeling the weight of it, the crackle of magic that thrilled through his body, raising the hairs on the backs of his arms and at the nape of his neck. He channeled it, hearing its bell-like ringing in his ears, the vibration of its power through his body— 

There was a strangely familiar noise near the front of the house, not that of his animals, all of whom were clustered in the room with him (though, typically, Pliny was facing away from him, pretending it was just a coincidence that he had also ended up in the forge room). The front door, he realized, though it took him a moment to place the sound because he had never heard it from a distance. A prickle of dread crept up his spine. Who would dare to enter his home? He tightened his grip on his hammer as footsteps tracked through the long entryway toward the forging room. Pliny leapt up and hissed, a vicious noise Hector had never heard him make before. Hector turned. 

“Master Dracula?” 

Dracula’s dark form dominated the room. Rain still sluiced off his hair, plastered in wet clumps against his pale, downturned face, and the fathomless blackness of his cloak. The animals cowered at his presence. Something was very wrong. 

 

* * *

 

It was only after Dracula had disappeared into the rain-washed night that Hector realized Alexandria had vanished. Pliny stuck close to Hector’s feet, hackles still up, warily surveying Hector’s home in case any other vampires lurked about, and Hector crouched beside him and stroked the soft fur between his ears until he quieted and pressed his small face into Hector’s callused palm. Robert and Chester lurked around the dark corners of the room, their little glowing eyes tracking Hector’s movements as he quieted Pliny. Athena hooted testily from the rafters. 

“Alexandria?” Careful not to step on Pliny, Hector searched the house for his wolfdog. He found her under his bed, curled against the far wall, her single ear flattened back on her head. “It’s all right.” He sat on the floor and gestured toward her. Pliny rubbed his side against Hector’s back, his tail curling up over Hector’s shoulderblades. 

Alexandria whined but she wriggled out from under the bed, nuzzling her cool wet nose against his outstretched hand. He scratched his fingers over her ear. 

“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” he murmured to her. “He’s gone now.” 

Alexandria pressed into his lap and he petted her until she, too, calmed. He was sandwiched between her weight at his front and that of Pliny, who still leaned against his back, but even in this comfortable position an awful realization seized him. If he were to move to Dracula’s castle to aid him in the prosecution of this war, he might have to leave some of his animals behind. His throat tightened and he wrapped his arms around Alexandria, pressing his face into her thick fur. She smelled of ozone and dust, cypress and rain, warm iron and wood. Pleased, she nudged her nose into his still-damp hair. 

“Good girl,” he whispered. He sat for a long time on the floor with Alexandria and Pliny, feeling the cool press of their bodies against his. 

Dracula’s war was just, of course: Hector thought of the sweet fox in the forging room; and of Chester’s little head, permanently askew from the trap he had been cruelly caught in; and of his mother’s horrified shriek when she had seen Aristotle’s newly animated form and the bright blue light in his loving eyes. Moreover, Hector was flattered to have been asked to fill such a prestigious position by such a powerful man. 

Yet, as was the way with all good things in this world, he would have to make sacrifices. That was, after all, how alchemy worked.

Alexandria was a creature of the island, of its cypress trees and citrus groves, of the little field mice she loved to chase in the rolling hills beside Hector’s house, of its warm days and cool nights. He sighed into her fur and drew back from her, gazing for a long moment into her luminous eyes. 

He had forging to do. 

The fox was still half-curled on his forging table, her little paws gathered below the natural curve of her body, the silver-white fur at the tip of her tail nearly luminous in the candlelight. He marveled again at how pristine she looked, the lush fall of her fur, the sleek curves of her exposed musculature. He took his hammer in his hands. 

When he was a child the spark and rush of magic had been a surprise, a jolt through his body like when he had fallen out of the gnarled branches of the old holly oak tree in the field behind his house and landed wrong on his wrist, feeling the fragile bones grind and snap within the meat of his arm. He had known the principles: the sigils, the spark of metal against metal, the lightning-bright flash of energy that ignited the air around it. But channeling that power himself, feeling the tingle of magic up his slim young arms, smelling the sharp ozone scent in the air—it had surprised him. He hadn’t been sure he could do it. Not everyone could. Yet the blue pillar of arcane energy had taken its jagged form beside Aristotle’s limp body and Hector had known power, true power, the power to finally shape the world to his will. The power to save. 

He channeled that energy now, focusing on the transmutation sigils on the forging table and his hammer, feeling the potential of magic in the humid air inside his house. He gathered that potential to him, feeling the rush of air whipped around him by the arcane forces, closing his eyes briefly to the bright blue light of his magic. He tightened his grip around the handle of the hammer; it fit comfortably against the calluses worn into his skin by long use. His slightly damp hair fluttered around his face, buffeting his closed eyelids and parted lips. He raised his arm. 

The hammer crashed against the table in a flash of blue fire, its metallic clang loud and familiar in the close wooden space of the room. The fire enveloped the fox’s body, illuminating her fur but also seeping under it, into the cords of her muscles, between her white teeth, under her closed eyelids. She glowed. Hector hit the table again, the sound ringing in his ears, and the flames curled up around the both of them, him and the fox together. The candles that surrounded the table flickered and guttered, casting strange shadows across the walls of the room. 

She moved. Her little paws, bunched together by Hector’s careful hands, twitched and quivered as though she dreamt of running. Her sides heaved, soft fur shining in the arcane light. Finally, finally, her eyes opened, luminous blue. 

The fox’s sleek body trembled as life animated her once again. Clumsily, she struggled to stand, her paws sliding helplessly against the metal of the forging table. Hector stretched one hand toward her. She nosed at his curled knuckles and then rubbed the whole side of her face against his fingers. The short fur that covered her muzzle was exquisitely soft. Her whiskers tickled his skin. Gently, Hector curled his hand around her side and gave her shoulder a little nudge. The blade of her scapula shifted under her fur, muscle and bone working in perfect unison, and with his help she got to her feet. She gazed up at him and her mouth opened in a wide grin; Hector saw the bright line of her white teeth and the darkness of the inside of her mouth, the mobile hint of her perfect pink tongue as she panted at him. 

“Good girl,” Hector murmured, and the fox pressed herself into his chest, rubbing her forehead and split ear against his shirt. He caught her in both arms and lifted her against him, feeling the taut weightlessness of her living muscles as he cradled her. Had it only been that afternoon that he had carried her heavy, limp body through the rain? She nuzzled at his chin and he smiled down at her. 

He hadn’t yet named her, but he didn’t feel any particular rush to do so. Her name would come, in time. After all, they had forever.


End file.
